Of course, I saw Brown occasionally during the next nine years, but I have no time this evening to relate his wildcat crusades in Kansas and Missouri, so we will pass over to the closing days of his life.
Oliver, Brown's youngest son, grew up on the North Elba farm, and through him I was kept informed concerning Brown's border free-booters until Brown came and took him to the Kennedy Farm near Harper's Ferry.
NEAR HARPER'S FERRY.
Anna, Brown's oldest daughter by his second wife, returned from Maryland about the last of October, 1859, when at her father's request she sent for me and gave me all the particulars concerning their rendezvous at the Kennedy Farm and their contemplated raid on Hall's Rifle Works at Harper's Ferry.
The next day, after promising my pets, my wife and Vida, that I would not join the mutineers, as Vida liked to call them, I left for Washington, and was soon in consultation with John Brown in the attic of the little house on the Kennedy Farm, where Anna had, as Brown said, acted as his watchdog, entertaining and detaining all strangers until he or his men could disperse or prepare.
I soon discovered that his attitude toward universal freedom had not abated, and that all his men, including three sons, had become much like him, as, at the prayer meeting in the little church nearby and the family altar, they often chimed in "Amen." As I think of them now I can truthfully say I never saw a band of men more Christianized in their expressions than those, for John had instilled into their minds his theory that the world was to be benefited by the struggle they were about to begin.
One day Oliver, his father and I walked down to Harper's Ferry, and while returning in the evening, Oliver and I pressed him for an explanation of the course he would pursue when he had taken possession of the arms at the Rifle Works, as the slaves would be useless at first, but he had none—he seemed to rely implicitly upon God and the Northern abolitionists to see him through.
Suddenly stopping us under the dark shadowy trees, and laying one hand on Oliver's shoulder and the other on mine, he said low and earnestly: "I do not know where I shall be when that beautiful moon has made its journey around this world once more, but one thing I do know and that is this: through my ceaseless efforts I have corralled the slave holders until now I have them in a trap. If my efforts are not impeded the slave will eventually free himself. If they are, and I am destroyed, the North, through sympathy for me and justice to the slave, will continue my cause until the bondmen are free. So you see I have them in a trap, but my aim is to avoid a bloody war, for the families in the South are as dear to me as those in the North, but slavery is a sin and must cease. Soon this generation will be passed, other men our lands will till and other men our streets will fill. When we are all gone the South as well as the North will speak kindly of him who dared to oppose his country's unjust laws."
All of Brown's men as well as myself considered the Harper's Ferry raid an unwise move, but to Brown, human life seemed a secondary matter, as compared to the continuation of national sin.